The Way Up
by barbex
Summary: The history of the quarians, according to my headcanon. How did they end up in those suits, why do their eyes glow? After the end of the Reaper War, Tali discovers secrets on Rannoch and asks Liara for help. Tali and Liara as history nerds and many original quarian characters. This is a story of adventure and discovery, a look into quarian history.
1. Chapter 1

_Here is the idea:_

_It is ridiculous that nobody knows what quarians look like if they have only been living in their suits for 300 years. That is not a long time, we have photographs from 300 years ago and we are hardly as technical as the quarians. And why are the masks not transparent? Why have they not learned to adapt their immune system? Why do their eyes glow? So many questions, so little answers. This calls for extensive headcanons! _

_Prepare for about 14 chapters, most of them have already been written during NaNoWriMo last November. I'm trying to answer all the questions in my little story._

* * *

"Hello Tali, how nice to hear from you."

Liara's face was slightly distorted over the long distance comm. Major comm systems were still down after the galaxy wide Reaper war. Surprise was clearly visible on her face, Tali did not speak with the not-quite-so-shadowy Shadow Broker often. While they had worked well together and were connected by that special Normandy-bond, they never developed the tight friendship as some of the other crew had. Tali had to admit that she did not even contact Garrus as much as she should have even though she considered Garrus one of her closest friends.

"Hello Liara, are you well?"

She smiled and was glad that Liara could actually see it. She only wore her hood and the protective faceplate when she went outside, to shield herself from the harsh sunlight on Rannoch. Inside of her small, portable home, she kept it off. It had taken almost a year for the immunoboosters to work and she still sometimes panicked when her fingers touched her skin and grieves on her face.

Her room was dark, the only light coming from the terminal and the starlight that filtered through the windows. She had taken off her hooded coat and the bioluminescent lines on the sides of her face and down her neck shone brightly. Their nervous pulse gave the walls a slightly purple tinge. Tali took a breath, she wasn't even sure why she was so nervous. Even though she just wanted to ask Liara a simple favor, she still felt like this would be a turning point for her. Liara looked back at her, waiting patiently in that serene asari way that had driven Shepard crazy all the time.

"I am quite well, thank you," she said with a smile, looking incredibly beautiful. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I have found something, here, on Rannoch, underground."

"Have you turned to archeology?" Liara asked with wide eyes.

"I may have, a little," Tali's lines began to pulse in bright luminescence again. She felt quite embarrassed to talk to Liara, who had been an archeologist for a hundred years, about this silly hobby of hers. "I have scanned an area on Rannoch that showed traces of early settlements. When I extended the scans into the ground, I found even more."

"I didn't know you were interested in archeology," Liara said with a surprised smile. "Do you want to investigate that site?"

"Yes, I do but..." Tali's hand went to the top of her head, where her hair had grown quite a lot from the stubble it had been under the hood for so many years. Even though she knew it was there and could touch it, it was still an incredible sensation. "I'm not an archaeologist or a historian. In fact, no quarian is. We have no historians, hardly any documents about our past. We never cared about history, about the past. Quarians move forward, we don't look back."

Liara took a sharp breath as she shook her head. "So much knowledge lost!"

"So of course, we also don't have any archeologists," Tali said. "We know how to scan and collect data but we don't know what to make of it."

"I see," Liara nodded, "So you need a team of experts in excavation and in historical interpretations." Her concentration shifted to a side terminal where she typed in various commands.

Tali nodded, "I thought I'd ask you because you are the only archaeologist I know."

The asari turned back to the screen with a warm smile.

"I will gladly help you Tali. I probably won't be able to come and dig myself, although I sometimes long for that..." she trailed off, looking a bit sad for a second but quickly shook it off. "But I know of a team of experts that would love to work on that. There is not much demand for archeologists at the moment, with all the rebuilding going on." She returned to typing.

"I can't pay them much, in fact, my funds are very limited. The university has only been open for half a year and the history branch is brand new. I don't get a lot of funding."

"'_I'_?" Liara looked up with amusement playing on her lips, "Did I hear that correctly, you are the head of the history department at the University of Rannoch?"

"The Shepard's University of Lekon on Rannoch," Tali sighed. "Yes, I am." She twitched as her fingers touched the skin on her face, covering up the embarrassing light pulses. "Shepard once told me that the humans have a saying: 'Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. I felt like it was time to look at our history, to learn from that so I spoke to the head of the university about it. Ten minutes later, I was the head of the department. I got an asari matriarch for galactic history..."

"Matriarch Telvisia. I had wondered why she moved to Rannoch," Liara murmured and Tali decided not to wonder how much Liara knew about everybody.

"Yes, she is teaching several classes. I even got Samara to agree to come in and give a few guest lectures."

Liara looked very impressed. "Oh, I might even visit to hear that lecture, if I can and the head of the history department would allow me to do so."

Tali laughed for the first time in days. She had been under so much stress lately that she had neglected to stay in touch with friends. "Of course, Liara, you can visit the... my department anytime. Maybe you could also visit the dig site, for old times sake?"

"Yes..." Liara stared off into the distance, a wistful smile on her lips. "Yes, I might do that. It would probably do me well, to touch dirt again." Her eyes focused again and she smiled at Tali. "I also forwarded you the names and contacts of a few teachers and teaching experts that might be beneficial for your department." Her omni-tool pinged and she brought up the message, "Ah yes, Dr. Deltreva and her team have agreed to help you in your excavation, quite enthusiastically so."

"But I can't pay them..."

"Don't worry about it. I have set up a sponsorship for the project and I promise you that it will be funded," Liara said ominously, sounding like what one would imagine the fearsome Shadow Broker to be. Then, she smiled at Tali and as quickly as it had come, the fearsome persona dissipated. "So what has you so excited about that site? If you can tell me..."

Tali grinned, "As if you wouldn't find out anyway."

Liara smiled even more.

"I found underground structures, " Tali said, "artificial structures. There used to be caves under the mountains of Gelldre Kah, but they collapsed about a thousand years ago, according to my readings. But my scans found an area that is still intact and it's filled with structures. It looks like buildings on stilts, connected by a web of bridges."

Liara looked very thoughtful. "My father told me of stories about the quarians and that they used to live underground. I never believed her, there are no documents about it anywhere. But I also never believed her when she said that quarians have hair. Now look at you and your beautiful hair!"

"Thank you." Tali felt her skin warm and the walls reflected her bright luminescence with purple pulses. Her hand went to the short, dark waves. After having been regulated for most of her life, her hair was still very slow in its growing.

"It really looks lovely, Tali and I love to be able to see your face. Do you not need the hooded mask anymore?"

Tali picked up the modified faceplate and showed it to Liara.

"Only to protect me from the sunlight. See? It's not sealed anymore. We have a filter here for dust but that's just out of convenience. We still get quite a lot of sandstorms in this area. But we don't filter the local bacteria anymore, training our immune system. I still filter most pollen. I have an allergic reaction against them which is quite common actually."

"Yes, I heard about that. Are you being treated for that?" Liara stopped typing, giving Tali her full attention. Suddenly, Tali realized that she had not felt so content and relaxed in a long time. She should put 'talking to a friend' on her to-do list regularly.

"Yes, we use a human procedure called desensitizing. By introducing the allergens slowly in a modified form, our immune system can get used to them and adapt. It has been quite successful for most quarians. It seems to take a bit longer for me." Tali put the facemask to the side. "My doctor tells me it's because of the stress."

"Doctors always say that," Liara said with a weary smile. "But you do look a bit stressed."

"I guess, heading a history department with no knowledge of history and archeology is a bit stressful. I'm a tech-geek! I'm useless in this!"

"You are not useless, Tali, you have accomplished a lot already," Liara said reassuringly. "I... would you like me to visit you? I don't want to add to your stress but maybe..." suddenly Liara looked like the inexperienced young asari from the old days again. Back when she wandered around the Normandy wide-eyed, intimidated by Shepard and everybody else on board. "... we know each other well... and I love talking about archeology... so I thought..."

"We are friends, Liara! I would love for you to come here and tell me about archeology," Tali replied with a smile realizing that she really looked forward to meeting Liara again. She had made new friends on Rannoch and every quarian knew her. Though none of that could compare to the Normandy-bond; the years of working and fighting, celebrating and grieving at each other's side.

* * *

"Welcome to Lekon Spaceport on Rannoch," the announcement over the comm woke Liara from a deep sleep. She must have been more tired than she had thought. Around her, the curtains were being drawn back by a perky, young asari flight attendant.

"We have arrived, Dr. T'Soni. Can I help you with your things?"

The young asari smiled at her with all the excitement of the young and inexperienced. Liara automatically analyzed her aura to see how she really felt. Like all asari, she could see a person's emotions reflected in colors if she concentrated on it. This young woman looked genuinely happy, her aura shining brightly around her. Those auras had become rare in the last few years. The darkness of the Reaper War and it's losses weighed heavily on everyone's soul. This young asari either repressed those dark times or decided to ignore them. Liara suddenly felt very old, more than her true years weighing on her in memories and experiences.

Sunlight filtered brightly, white and purple through the windows of the shuttle. Maybe catching a bit of sunlight would do her good, chasing the dark shadows from her mind.

"Thank you, I think I can manage."

She grabbed her small bag and shoved the datapad she had been trying to read into it. Stepping out of the shuttlecraft, she pulled the hood over her head and adjusted the dark screen in front of her eyes. Rannoch's sun was harsh, even to the tough skin of an asari and it was recommended to shield the eyes from it. The quarians still wore protective suits and masks against it, despite their immune systems having adapted quite successfully.

With her visor darkened, Liara stepped out of the shuttle. The hot, dry air of Rannoch sliced her like a knife to her lungs. The filtered and moistened air of her ship had spoiled her and the winds of Rannoch reminded her of that. She coughed lightly. The flight attendant handed her a moist cloth to hold in front of her face. It had two clasps to fix it to the hood and Liara saw many other visitors and quarians walking around with moist cloths hanging from their hoods. There must be a technological solution to this available, especially for quarians that still wore a variation of the enviro suits with the masks. But it seemed to have become a fashionable accessory as Liara noticed the different colors and fabrics worn all around her.

Rannoch was still rebuilding, not only from the Reaper war but also from the decades of geth occupation. The spaceport was plain with a few buildings scattered around it connected by silvery sunsails. Liara quickly stepped under one such sail, to get out of the direct sunlight. Her bags were delivered to her on a hovering transport box. She easily spotted Tali in the crowd. She still wore a purple suit with the familiar pattern of white swirls decorating the fabric. She also still wore the familiar face mask, not the moist cloth like almost everybody else. Her hood did not sit as tight as before, as the rest of her clothes looked more like a loose dress and less like an enviro suit.

"Liara!" Tali called out and waved at her.

Liara felt relief untensing her shoulders and she realized how much she had missed the simplicity of friendship. She wasn't lonely. She was hardly ever alone but being with your bondmate was something entirely different than being with a friend. She walked up to Tali, hugging her tighter than she usually did.

"Tali, it's so nice to see you."

She released her, Tali's aura shifting through different colors, showing her nervousness. They strolled over to the side of the path, staying under the sunsail. It was getting closer to evening and the sunlight was beginning to fade but it was still bright enough to keep the visors darkened. Tali let them over to a skycar, it's windows and roof darkened. Pleasantly cool air touched her face when Tali opened the door for her to throw her bags in and climb in.

Tali drove out of the city, pointing to buildings and institutions along the way. Lekon was growing fast, it was the largest city on Rannoch. It still looked a bit ramshackled with prefab buildings stacked on top of each other and the sunsails fluttering between them. There was construction everywhere, buildings rising up with a more quarian aesthetic and the main roads had solid sunroofs. In the long run, the whole city would one day be covered with these, Tali explained.

They left the city behind them, passing fewer and fewer buildings on the side of the road. Tali had gotten very quiet. She had taken off her mask and Liara could see the lines and greaves on her face and neck glimmering with her luminescence. It was incredibly beautiful. Liara had always thought that Tali was beautiful, even before she had ever seen her face. Her body language, defiant stance and beautiful voice combined with the colors of her aura, had always made her beautiful.

Around them the last buildings shrunk into the background, the desert stretching around them towards the horizon. In front of them, a mountain range rose up with a sudden rise, jagged cliffs with deep valleys in between. Tali steered the skycar to a lonely prefab container at the edge of a roped off dig site, right at the foot of a smaller mountain range.

Liara tried taking off the visor that was still shielding her eyes but obviously Tali's eyes were better adjusted to the bright light on Rannoch. The sunlight had become dimmer and Liara could at least set her visor to a lighter setting, finally seeing the desert sand in the light of the setting sun with it's pink shade.

She had read that a lot of people considered this part of the day the most beautiful on Rannoch. In fact, most quarians slept during the hours that the sun was at it's highest to avoid the harsh rays and used the evening through the night until sunrise for work and leisure. Quarian cities were lit with blue and purple lights all through the night. Energy was not a scarce resource from collecting the sun's energy through photovoltaics during the day.

Tali opened the door to the prefab building and Liara got a glimpse of a sparsely furnished room with a large desk, bed, couch and small table with two chairs. Every single piece of furniture was covered with datapads, boxes with rocks and sand and unusual pieces of thick, paper-like fabric. The room would have looked ugly and uncomfortable were it not for the pictures and curtains on the walls, showing beautiful quarian art. Tali took Liara's bags and placed them just inside the door and ushered her out again towards the dig site.

"I want to show you something first while the sun is still up," Tali said.

The dig site looked shallow from the outside but as they got closer, Liara could see that it was actually a rather deep and narrow hole that turned into a tunnel at the bottom. She felt her perspective change as she looked around, her old training as an archeologist taking over. She noticed the different layers of soil that the dig went through. The topsoil had the familiar pinkish color that repeated a few times on the way down in different layers. Close to the bottom of the pit, blue and green layers appeared. Liara also saw layers that looked rougher, promising debris of some kind in them. She itched to go down there with tools and a brush; unearthing artifacts of forgotten civilisations again. It had been such a long time that she had felt dirt on her skin.

"You see it, right?" Tali asked quietly.

"You mean the traces of debris in those deep layers? Yes, I do. I'm also intrigued by the blueish color down there." Liara switched on the enhancement on her visor to get a better look.

Tali nodded. "I had the soil examined at our brandnew biochemistry department. The blue and green stems from vegetation that had been covered by a landslide over 900 years ago. They said that the vegetation is very different from the vegetation we know on the surface now. The cells looked to be extremely efficient in converting sunlight. They would have burned up here."

"So these plants may have lived underground?"

"Yes, that's the theory. But," Tali covertly lowered her voice, "we also found traces of people."

"Quarians?" Liara almost held her breath. There was so little known about the history of the quarians.

"Well..." Tali hesitated because she knew that the findings were not quite solid. She couldn't just jump to conclusions. "We don't have anything to compare our readings to. We're just starting in finding traces of our past... but I think that those are from quarians." She stood straighter, conviction in her voice, "I believe, it's quarians that lived underground, more than a thousand years ago."

Liara felt a shiver run up her back. Very little was known about the ancient quarians. There was proof that they had once lived on the surface, moving on all fours. Those ancient quarians had been essential for Rannoch to develop an eco-system. The lack of flying insects made the spreading of seeds dependent on wildlife and quarian ancestors. However, there was a gap in the history, hundreds of years with no historic documentation, nothing on how the quarians lived in those days. The theory that their ancestors used to live underground had been rejected by many quarians, not wanting to be connected to cave dwelling lizards.

Liara slowly breathed out and placed a hand on Tali's shoulder.

"By the goddess, that would be an incredible find. A quarian civilization underground, that would cause a huge commotion, correct?"

Tali nodded. "Yes, that theory is hated among many. We don't like thinking about our history anyway, we look forward, not back. Living underground - like lizards - quarians don't like to think of themselves that way."

"Maybe it is time for the quarians to learn about their history," Liara said thoughtfully. "Who knows how many things are hidden in your history, how much wisdom you could gain? The quarians need to know themselves."

Tali let out a long sigh, her shoulders falling forward. "Well, I am the head of the new history department on our university, so who else but me? Not that I really know how to convince people to listen to me."

Liara let out a chuckle, "Tali, I have seen you stand up to admirals, I know you will be fine!"

Tali smiled at her, her luminescence shining beautifully in the lines on her face. "I hope you are right, Liara, I'm going to cling to that thought."

Liara looked back into the cave, the sunlight had sunk so low now, that the bottom of the pit was in darkness.

"So these structures you told me about..."

"We have not reached them yet. Dr. Deltreva and her team started this dig two weeks ago and they are constructing a tunnel to the cavity my scanners showed inside the mountain. We stopped to preserve the traces of plant life, the remains of pottery and some metal alloys. It will take weeks, months to analyze all of it but Dr. Deltreva wants to continue digging the tunnel tomorrow. She estimates two more days until they reach the structures."

"I'm looking forward to seeing them," Liara said. "So what do you have planned for tonight?"

Tali pulsed nervously. "I'm not a very good host, I'm sorry. I didn't even prepare... the couch converts to a bed and I have levo-food and drinks but if you would rather stay in a hotel in Lekon..."

Liara tilted her head to the side, using some quarian body language to calm Tali down.

"I would love to stay here with you, Tali, I don't need a lot of luxury except for my tea."

"Tea?" Tali stared at her in utter panic and Liara laughed out loud.

"I brought my tea with me, don't worry. It will be fine, let's go inside, make some food and talk about the old times and the new."

Tali's lines dimmed down in relief and she led her into the prefab building. She cleaned the table and made a half-hearted attempt at cleaning her desk until Liara stopped her. The rest of the evening was spent reminiscing about their time on the Normandy and about Liara's old archeological research.

* * *

_This is just the intro, a bit of Tali and Liara. In later chapters, we will travel into the past and meet the ancient quarians. _

_I'm making this all up, headcanons, hurray! My idea is that the quarians used to live underground, in caves, about 1000 years before the events of the games. I imagine them as having bioluminescence and having lines on their bodies that light up and using those lights as part of their communication. That's why their eyes glow, you see?_

_I hope you will like my ideas._

_Biggest thanks go to illusionsfire76 for editing this story._


	2. Chapter 2

_Welcome back, dear readers!_

* * *

"Professor Zorah, Dr. T'Soni? Would you care to join us in the tunnel? We're about to reach the cave," Dr. Deltreva's assistant called over the comm system.

Liara and Tali both pressed on their implant to answer.

"We'll be right there," Tali answered.

They both dropped their datapads on the table and picked up their hooded coats. The sun was still up, making the outside look blazingly white as they left the container. Tali squinted and fixed her mask to the hood, letting the faceplate darken to a comfortable level.

Recently, a young astrophysicist named Tan'Lordan, had published a theory that Rannoch's sun changed it's intensity over the years. He also established the hypothesis that the change in radiation outputs had radically changed the way the old quarians lived. To protect themselves from the harsher sunlight, they had to give up life in the open fields. Tali had contacted him right away; getting him to explain his theories to her and her class. Liara had sat in on the class which made Tali feel incredibly nervous at first.

She still felt out of place up there on the podium, being called "Professor" and having students listen to her. Her new class "Quarian Origins" had gotten her some critical looks in the university back when she had started it. The "cave theory" was not widely accepted but Tali managed to secure a well known asari historian and the young astrophysicist Tan'Lordan to hold classes. About twenty students had enrolled in the class. Almost all of them also signed up for the archaeological excursion and helped at the dig site.

Tali and Liara climbed down the stairs to the tunnel entrance, passing various students at work on the way down. They carefully extracted little things and pieces from the dark lines in the soil, checking it for traces of civilization. They all greeted Tali respectfully, it made her feel very strange. She still expected someone to call her out as a hack everyday.

Having Liara around for the last few weeks had helped her, she had been very supportive. She had a second prefab container installed next to Tali's and another module just for a power generator with photovoltaic collectors. The inside of the prefab hardly had enough room for a bed. It was full of terminals with screens from wall to wall. Liara worked in there many times but they also had spent many hours in Tali's room, studying scans and working through analyses from the students.

Tali and Liara became friends on the Normandy but weren't very close. They spent time in the mess hall together or looked over scans together but they never spent much time with each other. Over the last few weeks, they had become very close and Tali grew to know Liara as a friend. She was a tremendous help, teaching Tali what she needed to know about archeology.

Dr. Deltreva greeted them when they finally reached the bottom. She wasn't particularly impolite but she was a scientist and didn't waste time with pleasantries. They both put on helmets provided by her assistant, exchanging them for the visors and masks and followed Deltreva through the narrow tunnel. The carved walls around them were made of compact sand first but slowly transformed into rock. The tunnel was supported by poles and mass effect emitters and was considered safe. Tali still felt nervous even though she had crawled through many narrow tunnels on ships but those were made of metal. She liked metal, it made her feel safe. Rocks were not her favorite thing.

They kept walking in the darkness that even the harsh sunlight could not reach, going deeper into the tunnel. The only lights came from the flashlights on their helmets and the blue glow of the mass effect fields. Tali felt her feet getting tired, she wondered how long this tunnel could possibly be. In front of them, lights became brighter and they came to the end. Four members of Dr. Deltreva's team had prepared the rockface with small explosive charges, waiting for the head of the team to give the command.

"Won't we destroy the thing we are trying to preserve and discover if we blow up this place?" Tali asked Dr. Deltreva, remembering Liara's many teachings.

Dr. Deltreva looked at her as if she just now realized that Tali was even there. She was completely pre-occupied with the scanner and its readout. In answer, she projected a 3D-model of the cave, the tunnel and their positions to each other over her omni-tool.

"No, Professor Zorah, we are very careful not to destroy anything. As you can see here, the cave is surrounded by hard granite. We assume that is the reason why it is still intact. Most of the mountains of Gelldre Kah contain a mixture of granite and softer rocks. They have crumbled and cracked over thousands of years but this area is almost pure granite." She enhanced a section on the projection. "The granite acts like a protective bubble around this area but it also means that we cannot get in easily."

She stepped over to another asari who was working on the small charges sticking to the rockface.

"Tenja here, is in charge of the very controlled explosion that will give us a small hole to work through."

Tenja nodded and projected an image over her omni-tool, "The explosion will make the rock in front of us brittle, just enough to pick at it and widen the hole carefully. We just want it to be big enough to send an omni-camera through."

Liara stepped up and studied the projection intensely.

"Can we not get better readings from the inside of the cavity?" she asked.

Dr. Deltreva shook her head, "Unfortunately not. The granite is much too dense to get more than rough outlines."

Tenja nodded her signal to Dr. Deltreva. She ushered them back into the tunnel and raised a barrier at the entrance. The other four scientists also wrapped themselves in a biotic bubble and after a nod from Dr. Deltreva, Tenja triggered the explosives. The small room filled with a cloud of dust and small pieces of rock peppered the barrier, causing white ripples to spread across it. An air cleaner started up and filtered the particles out when the asari dropped the barriers.

On first glance, the rockface did not look much different. Only when the archeologists took their small chisels and hammers to it, could Tali see the fractures crisscrossing on it. They had to wait patiently for a long time until they had worked a small depression into the wall. Tenja raised her hand abruptly and the other asari stopped working. She then placed her chisel in the center of the depression and hit it hard with her hammer. Nothing happened. She repositioned the chisel and hit it with her hammer again. The chisel sunk into the rock and seemed to disappear. With a surprisingly quiet rumble, the rock inside the depression crumbled and fell away. It made a hollow sound as it fell into the cave. Cold air, smelling of moss and metal, seeped into the room.

Dr. Deltreva was the first one to breathe again.

"Hand me the camera."

She took a small, floating device from her assistant and placed it front of the hole. The camera slowly floated into the darkness. With its tiny light, it looked like an insect in the darkness of the cave, at least for the tiny part they could see of it. The head archaeologist projected the camera's transmission from her omni-tool. The other team members respectfully stepped aside to make room for Tali and Liara so that they could stand in front. Tali almost had to laugh at that. She felt like a kid playing with toys that were not hers.

Liara's hand on her back pulled her back to reality and she realized that she was communicating her nervousness with her lines to everyone in the room. With a deep breath she got her emotions under control again.

"I want everyone on this dig site to see the transmission from the camera," Tali said with a firm voice, "I want every student in this course to see this. This is our history, and it will not be kept secret."

Dr. Deltreva nodded and issued a few commands on her omni-tool. So far, they only saw the bright spot of the camera's flashlight crawling over mossy rocks. Occasionally, some areas lit up with blue glimmer. A stalactite hung from the ceiling, wrapped in a faint glow. One of the archeologists began to furiously type on her omni-tool and Dr. Deltreva adjusted the picture at the same time. More of the rocky walls and stalactites became visible now and they could see that they were covered with softly glowing vines.

"Those plants have bioluminescence, like quarians!" the archeologist pointed out and everyone looked at Tali. Her lines began to glow involuntarily. The asari continued, her fingers flying over the interface of her omni-tool. "That may have been an evolutionary advantage for quarians living underground. An ecosystem that does not rely on sunlight but on bioluminescence. That could have been the main resource of food and energy. This makes the cave-theory feasible!"

Tali had to hold on to Liara's arm for a second to steady herself. This was it! This was the proof she needed to find!

The camera floated down, turned and almost crashed into something. It slowed, dipping up and down. The cone of light illuminated a straight beam, presumably stretching from the bottom of the cave to the top. It was, without doubt, artificial. No natural design could ever be this straight. Every single person in the room outside of the cave gasped and Tali imagined the same thing happening all over the dig site as everyone watched the feed. The camera floated around the beam, an omni-sampler extended to scratch the surface. It removed some of the growth on the construction. In the light of the camera, they could see a metallic shine appear.

"Metal!" Dr. Deltreva gasped. "This is incredible!" The sampler scratched over the metallic surface and the doctor stared at her omni-tool reading the analysis. She gasped again, "An alloy! An iron-nickel alloy. By the goddess!" She looked around the group. "This alloy is technically perfect. The proportions of iron to nickel are such, that its rate of thermal expansion is very low. This requires a level of scientific knowledge and craftsmanship not far from our own today!"

The room fell quiet as everybody let that revelation sink in. They had expected to find traces of a rudimentary civilization, simple tools made of rocks and twigs, drawings on walls. Nobody had expected a technologically of an advanced society on an industrial level. Tali took a deep breath. This project had just grown. This was bigger than she had even imagined.

"I want Tan'Lordan here, I want the president of our university here - Keelah! - I want all members of the quarian council to be informed of this find. We will make everything public about this."

Liara looked at her, giving a tiny nod of encouragement.

"Yes, Professor Zorah," Dr. Deltreva mumbled, not taking her eyes away from the readout. "I will give you a report every day and send you all vid material."

"I want hourly reports for the next three days at least," Tali snapped back, earning her a surprised look from the asari doctor. "After that, we'll see. I want the current vid right now and the analysis of the metal composite."

This time, the doctor looked at her, "Yes, Professor Zorah, I'm transfering the files as we speak."

Liara stepped up, raising her voice slightly, "Will the structural integrity be preserved if the hole is opened up more?"

"We will try to make the access bigger but we can not promise anything," Dr. Deltreva answered, turning her attention back to her omni-tool again.

Tali turned away from the cave reluctantly, she would have loved to stay but she needed to talk to a lot of people. Liara followed her quietly through the tunnel, her presence a most welcome reassurance to Tali. She would have to speak to the head of the university, the politicians, and she would have to hold a press conference.

And what if nobody cared? Quarians did not look back - history was gone and forgotten.

Tali knew that that was a mistake. Not many realized how much they had lost by forgetting the history of the Morning War. They had not seen the files from the geth consciousness. If the quarians had known how the Morning War had started, maybe peacetalks would have been possible, years before the Reaper invasion forced a decision upon them. They could have seen the homeworld decades earlier if they had analyzed their history. But most people did not see it this way. How would they look on these finds? Would they even care?

"Am I overreacting, Liara? Am I jumping to conclusions?" Tali wondered if Liara could even hear her questions, whispering to herself.

"I don't think you are, no," Liara said behind her. "Sometimes just a tiny scrap of a piece of junk can turn our perspective of the world around. The first find of the protheans was an insignificant little piece of metal that later turned out to be part of a prothean shoulder guard. It almost got thrown away. You have a giant pole inside of cave here, a thousand years old and it is made of metal like we would make today." A little snicker could be heard from Liara. "No, I don't think you are overreacting. You might even be underreacting."

"Thank you," Tali looked over her shoulder as she kept on walking to the exit. "I'm glad you are here."

"I'm glad that I'm here too, I had forgotten how much I love this."

They reached the stairs and ladders and climbed back up to the surface. Every person they met on the way congratulated Tali. It was quite embarrassing.

"Are you going to stay?" Tali asked as they stepped on the topsoil.

"Of course I'm staying. This may be the most significant archeological discovery of this era. I don't want to miss it," Liara came up to her side, smiling.

"But you... you are bonded, shouldn't you be with your bondmate?" Tali looked at Liara from the side. The sun was down and she could look at her without her mask on. She had wondered about Liara's extended stay for a while but had avoided the question. It was so nice to have her around, to have someone to talk to, she didn't want to risk it. But she felt guilty for keeping her away from her bondmate.

"The Reaper War is over," Liara said with a soft voice, "we have time now. We will be together for a long time. If we are always together, how can we ever miss each other? We talk every morning before I go to sleep and it is wonderful. It is good to be apart for a while, knowing that we will soon hold each other again. We have time now, thanks to Shepard."

"Yes..." Tali felt the words slipping away from her. She missed having someone. "Thank you for being here, Liara. As long as you feel happy being here... I would be glad if you stayed."

"I feel happy and I'm happy that I can help you, Tali." Liara put a hand on her shoulder, "I have a feeling... the hardest part is yet to come."

Tali raised her face to the starry sky and sighed, "Yes, I think so too."


End file.
